October 3, 2026 - Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), member of the Senate Finance Committee, joined 
U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, and U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore), Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member, and eight colleagues in calling on Frank Bisignano, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), to drop the newly proposed citizenship and work authorization checkbox from the final version of the 2026 Form 1040.
“Adding this question for the first time in history appears to serve no legitimate tax administration purpose and risks increasing the tax gap by hundreds of billions of dollars,” wrote the senators.
The Yale Budget Lab estimates that weaponizing tax filing in this manner will cost $313 billion over the next ten years and further jeopardize the $66 billion that unauthorized workers pay in taxes every year.
“Turning the 1040 into an immigration tracker actively sabotages voluntary tax compliance and undermines the IRS’s core tax collection responsibilities… Putting this question on the front page of the Form 1040 will only discourage people from filing altogether,” said the senators.
The letter also pushes for the release of the updated tax gap estimate, which has been delayed almost a year. The last time that the IRS released a tax gap report was in October 2024, estimating the tax gap for the tax year 2022 was approximately $700 billion per year. The next report covering tax year 2023 was supposed to be released in the fall of 2025.
The senators demanded that the IRS remove the proposed citizenship and work authorization checkbox from the final version of the 2026 Form 1040 and release the late tax gap report for tax year 2023 by October 22, 2026.
The letter is also signed by U.S. Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
Source: Senator Elizabeth Warren